Letter: DUI falls under the scope of negligence

Thursday, June 15, 2006 | 7:18 a.m.

If the Las Vegas Sun had called the American Beverage Institute before writing a piece on the ABI's view of sobriety checkpoints, it would have avoided some mistakes in its June 7 article, "Liquor lobby fights to shut down sobriety checkpoints."

The ABI is not a liquor lobby. We are a trade association representing America's family restaurants, and are committed to the responsible serving of adult beverages.

We want to get as many drunken drivers off the road as possible, and government research has found roving patrols to be three times more effective at catching drunken drivers than sobriety checkpoints. Roving patrols are also an optimum strategy for apprehending other dangerous drivers, such as speeders - who annually kill more people than drunken driving.

Negligent driving includes drunken driving along with distracted driving and speeding. ABI's efforts to focus more attention on negligent driving in no way suggest that safety officials shouldn't go after drunken drivers; on the contrary, it widens the scope of who they should be targeting to keep our highways safe.

John Doyle, Washington, D.C.

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